


Saving Face

by Cheloya



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-10-27 06:49:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10803978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheloya/pseuds/Cheloya
Summary: Old, imported. Shared vision is the worst.





	Saving Face

The first time it happens, Watanuki wakes up and spends several minutes very disoriented until he turns on the bedside lamp and realises that only the left-hand side of his vision is his own. And then he sits there blinking for a few seconds more, trying to puzzle out the scene, because for one thing, it is the middle of the night, and for another, he can't _see._  
  
Not much, anyway - wherever Doumeki is, it’s totally dark. Maybe he'd had a nightmare or something, Watanuki thinks as he drowses, waiting for the vision to subside. Maybe this is what Doumeki's bedroom ceiling looks like. But, no - there are odd, muted glints of light, the hint of a ledge, and-- _bathroom,_ Watanuki deduces, finally, and there is only the barest moment of satisfaction in knowing before he realises properly what bathroom-plus-eye-sharing means.  
  
Embarrassed, Watanuki closes his eyes pointedly, but the right continues to see - short, repetitive movements in the dark, and thank god Doumeki hasn't turned the light on, oh god, _he does not want to be thinking about this_ \-- and with a final jolt to the darkened vision, Doumeki's eye flutters closed, and remains that way long enough that the shared vision stops being shared. Watanuki has never been so grateful to the inside of his right eyelid.  
  
He lies there fuming for a while, but when he rises scant hours later, ill-rested and cranky, he decides it will be easier - far easier - to just pretend it never happened.  
  
He manages to keep his mouth shut all day, even when Doumeki tells him he looks tired. He does, however, follow through on his snarled vow not to make the other's lunch the following day.  
  
-  
  
The second time it happens, Watanuki understands immediately. It makes it worse, somehow, to lie there and have to watch the darkened, unsteady vision, the tiled wall and the basin rocking close and back again with every stroke.  
  
He lies there and stares at himself in the floor-length mirror that fronts his closet, while his stomach quietly churns at the pale and oddly guilty expression on his face. Thank god, he thinks, burning with humiliation. Thank god he isn’t like that, doesn’t _do_ such things, doesn’t need to, and he curses Doumeki in his head over and over for even making him think about it.  
  
But he still doesn’t bring it up the next day at school, even when he has to make an (angry) excuse about waking up late to explain the absence of yet another bento.  
  
Yuuko doesn’t say anything when he goes to work, either, but she hardly needs to, when she smiles the smile of sensing-entertainment.  
  
-  
  
The third time it happens, it is much, much earlier in the evening, when Watanuki is _still cooking dinner, for the love of god_ , and the lights are on, this time, and there is water and steam and he is almost ready to call the Doumeki household and scream at the bastard himself when Doumeki tilts his head back far enough that Watanuki can see the boy’s reflection in the condensation-covered shower door.  
  
Their shared vision does not come with surround sound, but it does not take a genius to recognise the syllables Doumeki mouths as he comes.  
  
In the morning, Watanuki doesn’t remember having turned the stove off. He crawls into bed and stares at his lost, blotchy expression for about two seconds before the sight of his own confusion makes him roll over and face the wall.  
  
The food congeals slowly in his prized cookware, and he doesn’t give them a passing thought. He doesn’t feel like eating any more, anyway, let alone cooking or cleaning.  
  
Doumeki asks after his missing bento that day, and also why he spent half his family dinner with his right eye’s vision on Watanuki’s bedroom wall.  
  
Watanuki is later pretty sure that the return of the lost, vaguely pink expression of deliberate incomprehension scared the hell out of the other boy, but with everything he’s put up with, Watanuki thinks with grim false bravado, it serves the bastard right.  
  
-  
  
They have a job that night, and thank god it’s nothing too tricky, because neither is really able to concentrate very hard at the moment. When the job is over, Doumeki walks Watanuki home, even though he’s clearly pretty tired. Just before he walks inside his building, Watanuki grits his teeth and finally manages to say, “Can you - _please_ \- close your eyes?”  
  
Doumeki frowns, and does so, and Watanuki wants to tear off his ears. Miraculously, he remembers to keep his voice to whisper-scream level.  
  
“NOT HERE. In... in the shower. Next time. Please.”  
  
His voice is strangled, but he’s remarkably calm about it, even when Doumeki’s eyes open again, the vaguest hint of guilt playing about his eyebrows and the flat line of his lips. Watanuki walks away before he gets an answer.  
  
Whatever it is - _whatever_ it is – he doesn’t want to hear it.  
  
-  
  
The next time, all that happens is that Watanuki’s right eye goes dark – except for a brief moment when Doumeki forgets, but his head is flung back at the time, so all Watanuki sees is ceiling and headboard and wall.  
  
This is, somehow, worse. And he hates himself for wondering if it was only Doumeki this time, if there’d been someone else, out of his sight, who had Doumeki laid out that way.  
  
Yuuko only smirks when he serves her tea with a shaking hand and accidentally drops it all over her. She only smirks, and it is worse; it is _so much worse._  
  
-  
  
Watanuki is already lying awake when his vision goes dark, but he finds, to his horror, to the dark swoop of fire to his groin, that he doesn’t need Doumeki’s eye to be able to know, to be able to imagine, exactly what is happening.  
  
Doumeki doesn’t forget to keep his eyes closed this time (he had heard about the tea incident) but Watanuki lies there for a few minutes afterward, eyes screwed shut, face buried desperately into the pillow, before he reaches, and grasps, and nearly sobs with the relief of it. It is over all too quickly, and though he bites down on the pillow to muffle his own voice, only the left eye is pressed closed against it.  
  
The right is free to stare, dazedly (though he cannot say it is seeing), at his own disheveled, flushed reflection; his open, panting mouth in the mirror.  
  
“This is all your fault,” he tells his reflection, and pushes himself up, away.  
  
It has never been so wretched to do laundry.  
  
-  
  
Doumeki does not wait by the gate; Doumeki pounds three times at his apartment door while he is still buttoning his shirt and barges in without waiting for invitation the second that Watanuki unlocks the door. He looks exhausted, and for once Watanuki can’t think of anything to say in the face of his rudeness, his intensity.  
  
Doumeki doesn’t need much more than the silence to tip back Watanuki’s head and open his mouth on Watanuki’s, lips and tongue and hands pressing the smaller boy sweetly against the wall behind his front door.  
  
Doumeki doesn’t need _much_ more, but the lack of four top buttons and a jacket certainly helps.


End file.
